21 things the Zimbabwe opposition has to address to effectively compete with ZANU-PF

15-Consistency on key issues is imperative

Hartwell argues that some would argue that “in the politics of human life, consistency is not a virtue”, the reason being that political situations could be fluid, which in turn means that one has to improvise, adapt and survive. However, the problem with MDC-T during the GNU period is that it was consistently inconsistent on key policy issues like land reform, sanctions, amnesty, media reform, and China.  The MDC-T’s policy inconsistency was dangerous as it led to schizophrenic policy positions (internally), which weakened the party’s ability to control their external communication. This in turn, created confusion amongst the MDC-T’s supporters, thereby further weakening the party. (This seems to be the case right now. It is not clear whether the MDC Alliance is participating in the elections which are now less than two weeks away or not.)

16-It’s the media, stupid

“Of all the mistakes that MDC-T made, this was probably one of the most significant ones: they lacked effective communication with the media and thereby also the public at large,” Hartwell argues. “In a country like Zimbabwe, where the state media daily poison Zimbabweans with the ruling party’s propaganda, your key priority should be strategic messaging and communication. In addition to schizophrenic policy positions which negatively impacted external messaging, the MDC-T made three interrelated mistakes: (1) it showed ugly signs of mistreating the media, (2) it did not have a proper communication structure in place, and (3) the party failed to push hard for media freedom.”

17-Simplify your message

Political parties can possess the finest policies in the world, but if they cannot translate them into slogans that are catchy and resonate with the average individual, then they might as well throw them into the dustbin of history, Hartwell argues. He cites the example of the MDC-T policy proposal during the inclusive government which was called JUICE which originally stood for Jobs, Upliftment, Investment, Capital and Ecology although E was later changed to Environment. “The first idea embedded in JUICE – jobs – is therefore something that the average Zimbabwean can definitely relate to. Conversely, it is unclear what “Upliftment” means. As for the other three ideas related to JUICE – Investment, Capital and Ecology/Environment – it mindboggling why the MDC-T selected those as central pillars of their campaign. These are ideas that may even struggle to resonate with voters in middle-income countries. To be clear, these are important issues that are required for long-term development, but they did not belong in campaign slogans and they did not make for digestible soundbites.  In contrast, ZANU-PF consistently ran a campaign based on short snappy slogans such as ‘land reform’, ‘indigenise’, ‘illegal sanctions’, and ‘empowerment’ while the MDC-T and Tsvangirai were consistently characterised as ‘puppets of the West’. In short, ZANU-PF presented concise messages to the public, while MDC-T’s messages were often more complicated, thereby distorting their communication.”

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